1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to a system and method for managing voicemails using metadata. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for associating metadata, which includes an audible introduction, to a voicemail and managing the voicemail using the metadata.
2. Description of the Related Art
Voicemail has evolved into a very important technology for people at work and at home to communicate with each other. People are becoming more mobile, and rely on their voicemail system to store messages from callers. Today, almost every phone number has an associated voicemail system for a caller to leave a message. If a caller calls a phone number without voicemail capability, the caller may become irritated since the caller will have to re-call the number at a later time.
When a user receives a voicemail, the voicemail system typically allows the user to delete the voicemail or save the voicemail. Some inter-company voicemail systems allow the user to respond to the voicemail if the caller is calling from an inter-company phone number. The user may save a voicemail for a variety of reasons. First, the user may wish to think about his response to the voicemail message at a more convenient time. Second, the voicemail may include information in which the user wishes to write down or store in a computer file. Third, the user may wish to save the voicemail for future reference. Since most voicemails are remotely accessible, the user may use his voicemail system to store important information since the user is able to access the information from most telephones.
A challenge found with existing voicemail systems is their ability to provide sufficient saved message management. A user may have over fifty saved messages in a single month. Existing voicemail systems typically store voicemail messages based upon when the voicemail messages were received. The user may have to listen to each message in order to retrieve the message of interest. If the user wishes to continue to save a particular message for future reference, the particular message stays in the saved message box and the user sorts through the saved message each time the user is searching for a different message.
Additionally, some voicemail messages are exhaustive, lasting many minutes. The user may wish to retrieve information that is at the end of a three minute voicemail message. Each time the user wishes to retrieve the information, the user listens to the entire message in order to retrieve the information.
Furthermore, a user may wish to index voicemails based upon the content of the voicemail. A user may be working on three projects and wish to index each voicemail based upon which project it pertains. A challenge found with existing voicemails is their inability to retrieve voicemails based upon a set of criteria.
What is needed, therefore, is a way for a user to add information to a voicemail message which provides improved voicemail management.